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TOKYO-Orderly, pornography-free and safe for children, "Meet-Me," an online interactive virtual Tokyo, is Japan's answer to "Second Life." Or so its creators hope.Kunimasa Hamaoka, who oversees "Meet-Me" at digital marketing company Transcosmos Inc., is banking on the cultural differences between Japanese and Americans to compete against the world's top virtual community.Japanese are so well-behaved and conformist, he says, they would prefer a more predictable and secure virtual environment over the free-spirited anything-goes of "Second Life," created by San Francisco-based Linden Lab.In "Meet-Me," players' avatars, or computer-generated alter-egos, are rounder and softer, more like the cuddly characters of "Pokemon" than the angular and relatively realistic avatars of "Second Life."The sun rises and sets in "Meet-Me" on Tokyo time. And avatars must ride trains or other vehicles or walk or run to get around a city whose streets and buildings look much like real Tokyo's; they can't jump from place to place as they can in "Second Life."American Internet successes stories have leapt over to Japan with varying results. YouTube, for example, has done fine. But other imports haven't caught on, opening opportunities for Japanese variations to make it big.Japan's social networking service Mixi has attracted 11.1 million people, while the Japanese adaptation of MySpace has enjoyed only moderate success, with fewer than 1.4 million visitors, for example.But Sony Corp. of Japan, which has a major video game unit, last week delayed until next year the release of "Home," its entrant in the "metaverse," or virtual world...To read more go to:
As in the days of Noah.....
